No long, winding epic songs about soldiers at war, no massive, meandering epics. Elsewhere, he stretches out, but only a little, with the help of his son Casey on drums, longtime collaborators Marc Ribot guitar and Les Claypool bass , and various other big names like Keith Richards, Flea, Ben Jaffe and Daivd Hidalgo.
The whole thing is a bit ramshackle, but when he listens to his wife, Bad as Me is as good as anything Waits has ever done. The very qualities that make Leslie Feist such a distinctive pop artist are also the very things that make her too easy to dismiss: her understated melodies, restrained performances and thoughtful arrangements. The music, however, remains sophisticated and rhythmically feisty pun thoroughly intended even when so thoroughly keyed down.
At the drop of a programmed snare hit, Lykke Li, the Swedish princess of off-beat art-pop, can turn from sugar-coated sweetheart to devilish temptress to futuristic night club siren.
On Wounded Rhymes , Lykke Li has stepped up her game, crafting a brasher, more well-rounded effort that fully realizes the potential she showed on her debut. Tribal sounds loom large, kettle drums popping holes in the mix over deadpan synths and cozy blankets of noise. While her debut, Youth Novels , was a cool little hand-drawn doodle done in pencil—this is an oil painting, rich with color and more vivid detail.
In addition to continuing their badass reputation, it sparked a collaboration between the Atlanta punk rockers and the retro-minded producer on their latest album Arabia Mountain. In particular, Ronson helped the Black Lips shape this record into a focused, tight-knit garage-rock collection, retaining everything the band does right while doing away with the unnecessary frills. Despite being 16 songs long, the record punches through with hook after hook of infectious punk rock.
There are enough abandoned graveyards, bouts with alcoholism and visits from the Grim Reaper here to make a David Lynch movie seem sunny, but it never feels overwrought. This is a band still using their simple, seductive method of building quiet texture into a crash of energy.
He croons like a soul singer, his voice occasionally cracking under the weight of emotion, with each of his heavy admittances punctuated with a clashing guitar. Where Dear Science emphasized groove and density, Nine Types of Light is more restrained and elegant. The songs themselves are hazier and more insular, less emphatic and far more patient. But it works. The most ear-pleasing quality of the band is the way their DNA-sharing vocal cords are able to vibrate perfectly together, creating full, textured harmonies that seem to rise above the instrumentation while flowing along it.
Over the past decade, Daptone Records has established a reputation not only as a cohesive record label, but also as a cultural institution responsible for curating a neo-soul revival with a distinct sound. The Menahan Street Band hits their sweetspot as they lay down a lush, funk-laced backdrop for Bradley to work his magic. His band spans 11 members, but he primarily composes lighthearted, three-minute pop songs.
With these two tracks alone, Cults kicks off its proper debut LP with a brilliantly juxtaposed display of the sweet and the sour, the fierce and the tender range of their work. Ultimately, Cults is an album that can be enjoyed as either a summer soundtrack or as something with a darker, more concrete substance. The beauty of this notable debut is that either way works just as well as the other. While there are moments where the wails and wallows of Wye Oak immediately grab your attention, Civilian mostly gives back what the listener puts into it.
The Civil Wars seems like the moniker for a band exploring overt, loud disagreement. They have no problem transitioning from tempered introspections to fiery declarations, at times within a single track. War has never been so pleasant. This is nothing but 50 minutes of substantive noise-pop bliss.
The frontman has stated that the band set out to capture their live sound on record. Loud, raw, gritty? Sometimes silly, often earnest lyrics ripping from whiskey-soaked vocal chords? Got that, too. Divine Providence is a celebration of music by a band who likes nothing more than to have a good time—and what is more respectable than that?
The presence of sampled audio from actual cult leaders could understandably strike some critics as gimmicky, too. But still! Even on early internet hits "Go Outside" and "Oh My God", Cults' songs were more multi-faceted than skeptics acknowledged, their hooks barbed with alternate meanings, their core sound enriched by unexpected influences.
The self-titled debut from the New York-via-San Diego duo of Madeline Follin and Brian Oblivion confidently underscored their subtle complexity, balancing s girl-group winsomeness with the darker impulses that lay beneath the best songs from that world, fleshed out with elements from shoegaze, post-punk, and contemporary pop. Best of all, each song was a potential sleeper hit in its own right, from kidnapping fable "Abducted" to break-up back-and-forth "Bumper".
A recent remix with Freddie Gibbs even showed all Cults' talk about loving hip-hop was for real, while at the same time reinforcing the album's theme about the inherent danger of escapism-- whether into a cult or into pop music.
Cults: Go Outside. Kendrick Lamar Section. Whether due to the encroaching influence of indie and punk or the ascendance of Tumblr culture, amateurism in hip-hop was often hailed as a virtue this year. But Kendrick Lamar ran counter to this trend. It isn't just that he's a technically skilled rapper, although he can certainly hold his own in that department; it's that experience and technique allowed his personality to shine through.
Much like other artists in his Black Hippy crew, Lamar's skills feel like byproducts of the discovery of his own voice, and they've allowed him to make things work that might have-- and often did-- fall apart in other rapper's hands. From the slowed, space-y Drake-like production of "A.
For indie rock fans, it was almost impossible to avoid seeing Colin Stetson wielding his gigantic bass saxophone at some point during It felt like he was in more than one place at one time, either guesting with LCD Soundsystem, Bon Iver, and Arcade Fire, or heading out on his own to bring the blacked-out beauty of Judges to life.
This album felt like a haven for Stetson to retreat into, a place of sanctuary away from the mass audience his sax-for-hire reputation brought him. His ability to be everywhere at once is matched by the alchemical nature of his craft, where it frequently sounds like he's blowing great lumps of iron ore out of his instrument. The desolate nature of the music on Judges makes it feel like he's the loneliest guy in the world, assembling a great wall of machine noise as a buffer from some untold real-life tribulations.
Stetson is a runner who finds elation in the pain physical exercise brings, and his music functions in a similar manner-- if you listen up-close to this album you can hear him huffing and puffing away, creating a taxing whirl of intensity that never lets up. Laurie Anderson and Shara Worden]. In the three years since she released her debut-- 's searching and peculiar Youth Novels -- Swedish songwriter Lykke Li got tougher, more commanding: Wounded Rhymes is an aggressive, sometimes brutal meditation on sex and love and the complicated ways they intersect.
Wounded Rhymes is deliberate and rhythmic where Youth Novels was moony-eyed, and Li wears her newfound confidence well, bolstering it with heavy drums and big choruses. Her vocals are deep and grainy, even when she's confessing her devotion. Somehow, Li manages to make lyrical declarations like "Sadness is my boyfriend" and "My love is unrequited" sound perfectly self-possessed.
Bass music continued to mutate in a million different directions in perhaps the surest sign of its unpredictability is the fact that no one has come up with a better term than "bass music" to describe the broader spectrum of dubstep and its discontents.
Published: PM. The best songs of The top 40 tracks of the year, as voted for by Guardian writers. Published: AM. Best albums of how Guardian critics voted. Dorian Lynskey: The story behind Bon Iver's debut album was so perfect some wondered if its fragile beauty was a one off.
But the follow-up wove an even more ravishing tapestry of folk, ambient and MOR.
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